


Still We Have Made It, Alive in a Time

by Hecate



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Falling In Love, Falling Out of Love, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Identity Issues, Past Relationship(s), Skye | Daisy Johnson Needs a Hug, Team as Family, past Framework Skye | Daisy Johnson/Framework Grant Ward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-17 07:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14183697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: Daisy turns back to him then, looks at him, and there's wonder there, a question, too. And he knows that look, and he thinks she is remembering her Ward, is remembering the life before she realized who he was.Grant wants to tell her whoheis.[Note: I screwed around with the timeline after they return from the Framework.]





	Still We Have Made It, Alive in a Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamerfound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamerfound/gifts).



Grant Ward wakes up in a world without Hydra.

They tell him it's the real world. They tell him he's a real boy now, made of flesh and bones instead of code and electricity. They tell him he can have a life now. It sounds like a load of bullshit.

“What happened?” he asks, and he means his world, his home, his people. He means Skye.

The one that looks like the Doctor, that was him but isn't anymore, shrugs. “Aida destroyed it.”

“And the people?” Grant goes on.

“Gone,” is the reply, and Grant thinks that this man doesn't care, not about Skye and Trip and the people SHIELD saved, thinks that he is more like the doctor than Simmons wants to see.

Grant gets up, and he walks away. Nobody stops him.

*~*

He gets drunk. It's been months since he got do to that, months since the last time he let go of himself and his role like this. At home, there was no place and no time, life too dangerous to lose control even for one evening. Not since he joined SHIELD, hiding that part of him, not since he found out that Skye was Inhuman, hiding that part of her.

But here, at SHIELD once more, he drinks. It makes the walls look like they used to. When he wakes up, he thinks he's home, thinks he fell asleep at the base for whatever reason. Then, he remembers.

Waking up hurts this time, too.

*~*

Trip is dead in the real world, has been dead for a while, and it doesn't make sense, this loss, this absence.

“I'm sorry,” Daisy says with Skye's voice when they talk about it, and it's a lie, cruel and mean. Skye wouldn't have been sorry about his death. Trip was SHIELD, after all, and Skye was Hydra.

She smiles, and there's a sadness to it, some kind of despair. "He died in front of me," she tells him.

'But he didn't,' Grant wants to say. 'He faded away when Madame Hydra destroyed the world.'

One of them is lying. One story isn't true.

*~*

Jemma doesn't like him. This hasn't changed; the only constant between the worlds. It shouldn't bother him, he doesn't know her, after all; she is not the one made in the image of his lover. But it does because it's senseless, it's dumb. He's not their Ward, wouldn't know how to be, and he has no interest in carrying his burden.

"It's hard for her," Daisy says.

Grant nods. "It's hard for me, too."

Daisy looks away, looks down at her hands. "You'll get used to it. It's only a new life, after all." A quick smile, a glancing touch against his shoulder. "Happens all the time."

And he remembers joining SHIELD, remembers meeting Skye for the first time. "No," he replies, "It happens just once or twice."

*~*

He dreams of Skye, his Skye, and she is furious, she's terrifying, and she's screaming at him for betraying Hydra, for choosing SHIELD.

"You chose her," she tells him in another dream. "You chose her over me." But he didn't, he couldn't, and he keeps reaching out for her, keeps waking up when she fades into nothing.

He avoids Daisy, and he walks the hallways like a ghost, Grant Ward returned from the dead to haunt his people. They avoid him, too, every single one of them; they force smiles on their faces when they talk to him. He wants them to stop.

Grant dreams of Skye and he's kissing her, and then he's kissing Daisy. When he wakes up, he doesn't remember their differences, doesn't know how he knew that Daisy wasn't her.

*~*

Aida returns from wherever she was hiding, angry and human, and when he fights her, he almost feels at home, his old world hanging like a shadow over this new place. A being of bones and fire kills her, and it's a triumph, it's the victory he wanted for so long. Madame Hydra is dead and Hydra is gone, and this was supposed to be the happy ending.

But Trip is dead and so is Mace.

Hydra is gone but SHIELD is in shambles; here, too, is not what it could be.

His girlfriend is there and isn't, somebody he doesn't quite know looking at him, somebody that doesn't know him smiling her smile.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, Grant thinks. He wasn't supposed to lose her.

*~*

"I killed him," Coulson tells him. "Our Ward. I killed him."

Grant swallows, stares at him.

Coulson shrugs. "I thought you should know."

Grant stays silent, unsure if there is anything he's supposed to say. A reassurance maybe, or an accusation.

That night, he dreams of dying. It's Daisy who kills him. Or maybe it is Skye.

*~*

Fitz stands in the doorway of his room, and for a moment Grant sees the Doctor. He sees him, and he reaches for his gun, sees him and watches Fitz recoil. Then, he remembers.

"Sorry," he says. "I mistook you for someone else."

Fitz snorts. "I know the feeling."

They stare at each other for a moment then, and it's almost funny, this moment, this scene, with both of them facing a monster from another world.

"I thought he was my friend," Fitz tells him. "Ward." A quick smile, wistful and lost, and Fitz goes on: "He saved my life. He protected me. And then he tried to kill me."

'I'm sorry,' Grant almost says. But he doesn't want to apologize for what Ward did any longer.

"I'm not him," he says instead.

Fitz nods. "Me, neither," he says. Then, "At least that's what I keep on telling myself."

*~*

He trains with Daisy, hand to hand combat sessions that leave his body bruised; her moves quick, her powers a storm all around him. Still, he gets in a few punches, sends her stumbling once. When he offers her his hand, she doesn't take it. He knows why. Moments later, she flips him over her back, a perfect move, smooth and fast, and he goes down in a flail of limbs. When he looks up at her, he thinks, 'Skye used to do that,' and it's a shock, an injury. He refuses to let it show.

"Good move," he says.

"Yeah," Daisy agrees.

Later, they walk through the base together, her presence at his side familiar and yet strange. She isn't looking at him when she speaks. "I'm trying to tell myself that you're not him," she says. "But sometimes I just..."

"See him," Grant says, and Daisy nods. "The others are the same, I think," he goes on. "It's..." He stops.

"Hard?" Daisy guesses.

"And strange," he answers, and that doesn't even begin to express how it feels, this past that isn't his controlling his present.

"They'll get used to you," Daisy says, and Grant knows Skye, knows Daisy, too, and he thinks she is lying. It should bother Grant. But she's doing it for him and that somehow makes it easier.

He smiles and tells her, "Some days I still wish you were her."

*~*

They are at a diner, all of them, and he's sitting at Daisy's side, Coulson on the other. Out of the corner of his eye, he can't see that Trip and Mace are missing, that it's him alone without his team. Out of the corner of his eye, Daisy could be Skye and he could be anywhere with her. Grant tells himself not to get lost in that idea, and he turns to Daisy to see her and not some afterimage of a woman that never really existed. She frowns at him, confused, but doesn't say anything, goes back to eating.

There are olives in her salad. He picks them out with his fork and throws them on his plate before he quite knows what he's doing, the movement automatic, trained into him by Skye's obvious disgust for the fruits. Daisy turns back to him then, looks at him, and there's wonder there, a question, too. And he knows that look, and he thinks she is remembering her Ward, is remembering the life before she realized who he was.

Grant wants to tell her who _he_ is.

*~*

Something rips them all out of time.

Grant Ward wakes up in space.

He's starting to hate his life.

*~*

The future, it turns out, is a horrible place to be.

Earth is gone, blown to pieces, and humanity is slowly dying on a mockery of a space station that is more prison than home. There are monsters and aliens and Daisy fraying at the edges. Earth is gone because of her. And Grant remembers home, the other home, his first one, and he remembers Hydra hunting people like Daisy, forcing them away from the world. Thinks, just for the briefest moment, that this couldn't have happened there.

This is the future without Hydra, Grant thinks, this is what his world died for.

Maybe it wasn't worth it, he thinks. But it's just a flash of an idea, an image, and he thinks of Skye in danger, thinks of Hydra hurting her. He would have saved her from that, would have fought and died to free her.

So maybe that world would have ended just the same.

*~*

They take Daisy. That monster that crowned itself king of this worthless place has Daisy; and Grant feels like he's stuck in some loop, losing her again and again.

"We're getting her out," Coulson promises, and the worry in his voice echoes Grant's fear.

"Yes," Grant agrees. "We will."

But they don't, it's Fitz who saves her, and there is something in his eyes when they all find their way to each other again, something sharp and mean and horribly familiar. And Grant thinks, knows, that it was the Doctor, too, who saved Daisy.

He never expected to be grateful to him.

*~*

The team and Grant tumble through the chaos of the Lighthouse, they are running for their lives and their past, and he takes Daisy's hand as he is running, feels stronger when her fingers tighten in his.

“Come on,” she hisses when he stumbles, pulling him up.

“Go, go, go,” he yells when the blue bastards get too close.

And then, it's quiet, it's the monolith and the promise of return. It's Daisy telling them that she will stay behind. He stares at her.

“If I go back, I'll destroy the world,” she says, and it's a simple choice for her; cruel, too. She'll leave him behind, she'll leave her team behind, and it hurts, this choice, sharp as a knife to the gut.

“You can't know that,” he argues. “We don't know for sure it was you. And if it was… We can change things now.”

She smiles at him, this sad smile she has, that Skye had, too. “Not good enough,” she says.

He inhales then, slowly; looks at her. He knows how stubborn she is, knows that she would give herself up to do what she believes in when he would have given himself up for her. She has never been like him, not when it came to things like this.

“Okay,” he says. “Then I'll stay with you.”

She stares at him.

He shrugs.

*~*

Coulson tries to take Daisy with him.

Grant stops him.

Days later, with the finality of his decision hitting home, becoming as real and solid as the decrepit hallways the leftovers of humanity are living in, he starts to wonder if it had been the right decision. But it's the decision he has made and there is no going back now. He is getting used to that feeling.

“Thank you,” Daisy had said when she woke up in Kasius' quarters, the white walls strangely untouched by the explosion that had rocked the Lighthouse to its bones.

He had answered with a smile, forced and weak. “I hope you're sure of this.”

She had shrugged. “As sure as I can be.”

Tess and Flint had found them then, and together they had found the resistance, the humans that had fought the Kree alongside Mack and Yo-Yo. It was a ragtag group, tired, undernourished. Angry.

Daisy had looked at them, had looked at Tess and Flint. Had smiled. “Let’s do this,” she had said, and she had sounded as if she believed that they could, and she led them all back to Lighthouse to find out if there was still space left to live in.

Grant could only follow her.

*~*

They settle in one room together, Tess, Flint, Daisy and him. They settle in a room, put some blankets on the ground and call it home.

The door doesn't really close, and a spot in the corner always seems to be wet, no matter how often Tess works on the ducts running from ground to ceiling. There's always a draft, too, and the lights don't work properly.

But it's what they’ve got, it's the room they had chosen together, and one of the windows that opens up to the stars and the universe is just a few steps to the left of it. It is enough. It has to be.

*~*

"They still haven't found a body," Tess says, and there's a certain kind of grief in her voice, lost and disoriented.

Grant breathes in, thinks of Deke, thinks of his last words. "I'm sorry," he tells her, and he knows this feeling, still feels it for Trip.

Tess attempts a smile and fails, her lips bent in some painful shape. "I know," she says. Then, she snorts. "You know, at some point I wasn't sure if I would miss him when he was gone." Then, sadder, "But I do."

*~*

Grant dreams of Skye, dreams of her beneath him, her body solid, her skin soft, her touch demanding. “Grant,” she moans, and it's an echo of a past that never existed at all, a dream, maybe, something better than the program that it really was.

He wakes up, and Daisy is watching him.

“You said her name,” she tells him, waits. Says, “You said my name, too.”

It's another punch to the gut, another hit, and it feels as if these just keep on coming ever since he found out Skye was Inhuman, ever since Daisy came into his life.

He shrugs. “You look alike. Maybe I didn't know which one of you I was seeing.”

Daisy raises her eyebrows. “So you _do_ dream of me?”

Grant thinks of lying, and doesn't. There's not much sense in it, not anymore. The world has ended twice, after all. “Sometimes.”

A soft exhale, her mouth bending into something that could be smile or a grimace. “I still dream of him,” she tells him. Then, Daisy gets up, and she walks to the door.

For a moment, he wants to ask her if she's sure she's dreaming of Ward, wants to know how she tells them apart. But he stays silent. He looks after her, and he wants to touch her and find out if she feels different to Skye under his hands.

*~*

Flint wants to rebuild Earth. He tells them offhandedly, easily, as if it was a simple task, a foregone conclusion.

“Huh,” Grant says.

“Sounds like something Coulson would come up with,” Daisy says.

Tess grins at them. “Let’s do this.”

And for a moment, a bright second, she reminds him of Trip. He swallows the grief that follows, pushes it away from himself. There is no time for it anymore, no place. Still, he must have given himself away because Daisy is looking at him with worried eyes, Daisy is stepping to his side, her hand touching his fleetingly. 

“Yeah,” she says.

Grant agrees. “Not much else to do around here, right?”

Flint's answering smile seems almost happy.

*~*

“They will come back,” Daisy says into the darkness of an abandoned hallway.

Grant thinks of the team, thinks of Coulson. They would try, he thinks, if they found a way, if they could make the Earth safe from Daisy. Still, it's nothing he could believe in.

“The Kree,” Daisy goes on.

Grant exhales, and he's almost relieved that Daisy isn't lost in hope, that she's thinking about the coming battle instead. He should have expected that.

“There's not much here for them,” he says.

Daisy shrugs. “They wouldn't have to use all that many resources. We have no defenses, almost no weapons. And this shithole is close to falling apart.”

Grant reaches out, touches her shoulder. “We got you.”

Daisy's answering smile is fierce, dangerous. Grant could get lost in it.

*~*

Grant wakes up at night, and he thinks that it's been months since he last saw Skye. Thinks that he doesn't quite remember her, the tone of her voice when she was angry, the shape of her smile before she kissed him.

He's losing her, Daisy a blueprint that settles over his memories, a shadow that is becoming true and real and solid. He thinks that it should hurt more than it does. Thinks that maybe it doesn't because neither he nor Skye were real when they were in love.

Grant rolls to his side, looks for Daisy in the darkness. Finds her sleeping form close to him. Tess is there, too, and Flint, parts of a future that might not come to be, that might be destroyed by Coulson and the others. He closes his eyes, and he listens to them breathe.

*~*

When he first met Daisy, she wouldn't touch him, not unless circumstances forced her to. He understood, of course he did. It was Ward that kept her back, always Ward, and he knew there wasn't anything he could do about the ruins Ward had left behind.

Now, with her friends gone, he's all she has left from her life, and sometimes, her hands find his. Sometimes, she leans into him. 

Grant wonders if it makes her feel better or if she's just reminding herself of the past, punishing herself for letting it go.

*~*

The field of debris that used to be the world, used to be humanity's home, looks less chaotic these days. A construction site instead of clutter and chaos, and Grant has started to look at it more often. It feels a bit like looking at the stars used to, that field of pinpoint pricks of light scattered above him, promising possibilities and the everlasting chance of escape.

Now, he's looking at the promise of returning home.

It's something he tends to get lost in, standing at one of the windows and staring at the future. The world is quiet like this, hopeful, and those moments never last long enough.

“Grant,” Daisy says behind him, pulling him out of his thoughts sharply, “they need you at the farm.”

He looks away from the stars and from the debris, turns to her and nods. “I'll be there in a moment.”

She smiles, nods and walks away.

He never noticed that she started calling him by that name.

*~*

Daisy still keeps the postcard Fitz sent to them through time, its colors fading, one of the edges torn off. It used to be a promise, back when they first found it, the knowledge that Fitz knew what was going on, that he was coming for them. Now, it's a reminder of the choice Daisy made, of the people and the time they lost.

She looks at it sometimes, her grip loose on it, her face distant. Grant wants to ask her if she's okay when he sees her like this, but he never does. She isn't, and his words wouldn't make anything better.

"I miss them," she tells him once, her fingers gliding over Fitz's scribbled words, and he thinks she had too much of the moonshine some of the others give out when people look too broken or when somebody brings them something they can't resist.

"I know," he replies, and he makes his grip gentle when he touches her shoulder.

"I guess I didn't know that it would hurt like this," Daisy says.

"Would knowing it have changed anything?" Grant asks, and he smiles when Daisy shakes her head.

“But that doesn't help,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says, and he picks up her glass and empties it with one burning swallow. “It never does.”

He doesn't tell her that he hardly thinks of the people she misses so much, that they don't matter to him. Doesn't tell her that there was never anything for him to miss in her world. Only her, and she's with him.

*~*

Sometimes, when he goes to sleep, he looks over to Daisy, and he remembers that he told Skye he couldn't move in with her. Sometimes he thinks that fate took one look at his answer and found it lacking.

Sometimes he thinks fate always preferred Daisy over Skye. She's the real one, after all.

He wonders what that would say about him.

*~*

Grant is jogging through the hallways, his daily perimeter check, testing the walls and concrete that are close to cracking, testing the parts they already tried to rebuild. The Lighthouse is falling apart beneath their feet, the explosion not having left much room to live. They need every part of it.

Tess is sitting on the ground in a corner, far away from the living quarters. He thinks she's crying.

“Hey,” he says, and he crosses the distance between them with careful steps.

She looks at him with red eyes. “Hey.”

He sits down next to her without a word, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes. Time goes by like this, quiet and a bit broken.

Then, Tess breaks the silence, and her voice is raw with something injured. “Sometimes, I feel like I remember being dead.”

Grant looks at her and says nothing.

“I feel like I'm not even real,” she goes on.

Grant smiles then, reaches out to take her hand. “Let me tell you a story,” he says, and he begins. And he turns his life into a fairy tale that is just waiting for its happy ever after, the beautiful ending sure to come if he just waits for it long enough. It's a lie, of course, but most stories are, and it doesn't have to be true to make her feel better.

At some point, he hears familiar steps, and he doesn't turn to watch as Daisy approaches, only leans into her warmth when she settles down next to him.

*~*

The first time he kisses Daisy, she punches him. It's hardly a surprise. She's not Skye, after all, and she's not his to kiss. Maybe she'll never be, maybe she still sees Ward when she looks at him, even after everything.

He has stopped seeing Skye.

She storms off, leaving him in her dust, and he settles on the ground in the middle of the room. Kissing her, he thinks, had been nothing like kissing Skye. There was some sharpness to her that Skye lacked, some unknown bitterness.

He hopes he never gets used to it.

But he wants the chance to.

“I'm sorry,” she says hours later. "I think I didn't even mean it."

Grant shrugs. “It's okay. I shouldn't have,” and he isn't sure what she wants from him, is even less sure what she sees in him right in that moment. But he holds still under her gaze

Daisy looks at him for a long time then, silent and waiting. Then, she shrugs. “I guess so,” she says, and maybe there is doubt in her voice, maybe it's something else. Disappointment or hope. Her hand finds his despite her words, warm and sure, and she holds on to him as if it could mean something.

“You didn't feel like him,” she says, staring down at their hands.

Grant smiles.

*~*

"Tell me about Earth," Flint says.

Grant raises his eyebrows at him. Most of the people in the Lighthouse don't want to hear stories about the past, don't want to hear about the greens and blues and reds, don't want to know what it felt like to stand in the sunshine or stand in the rain. It's too much for them, Grant thinks, this loss, and they don't want to think about it.

"Motivation," Flint goes on. Pauses for moment, looking away from Grant. Then, he says, "Something to hold on to."

And there it is, Grant thinks, that fear Flint shares with Daisy and Tess; that fear that he would not be good enough, that he would fail. Grant knows it by now, has seen its shadows dance across too many faces. Mace had been like this as well.

"Okay," he says, and he tells Flint about the woods he used to hike in as a kid, tells him about the lake his father threw him in so he would learn to swim, thrashing and screaming whenever he broke the surface. He tells him about parties in abandoned barns, the beer cheap, the night air cool against his heated skin. He tells him about the cities, gray, hulking monsters filled to the brim with people and cars and noise.

"Do you miss it?" Flint asks.

Grant shrugs.

He has lost so many things in the last months, his world and his friends and Skye, and he has missed every bit of them. Now, he can't really tell what part of it he still grieves for.

*~*

Daisy is practicing her powers in one of the hallways, focusing them until they're sharp and exact. She moves things, takes them apart, blasts them into pieces. Grant loves watching her, sure in the certainty that he is safe with her.

And she lets him.

Tess and Flint are with him, too, watching Daisy with fascination. He thinks there is worry, too; fear. But they don't back away when she blows up a piece of the wall, Daisy preparing the area for the work that needs to be done soon; they don't twitch at the sound. Later, when Daisy is done, the hole in the wall neat, the debris put away in a corner, they applaud.

Daisy laughs and takes a bow, and for a moment Grant thinks they all could be happy in this place, here at the end of humanity.

*~*

They spend Tess' birthday in the Trawler, buying time before they have to work at the Lighthouse's defense system again; they spend Tess' birthday in space, and they're surrounded by everything Earth could be.

It's cold in the Trawler, all its energy directed to the engines instead of temperature control, and it's a coldness that is almost secondary and yet persistent, worming its way into Grant's body, making him shudder beneath its weight. In the end, they all come together in the front of the ship, looking out at the debris field, a blanket wrapped around them all. It's warm beneath it, but it's not the fabric that fights off the cold. It's Daisy on one side of him, Tess at the other, Flint hugging her.

“Feels like some survival story,” Daisy says, voice low.

He feels Tess shrug. “It kinda is.”

They're silent for a while, looking at Earth, looking at the stars. It's almost peaceful, almost happiness, this moment with Daisy and the others; the narrowness of the Lighthouse, its smells and sounds, left behind for a few precious hours.

“Happy birthday,” Grant says finally. “To many more to come.”

He wishes there could be more on a day like this, a cake, maybe, or champagne. But Tess smiles, and Grant thinks she means it, thinks that for once she can let go of her death, of its stillness, and she can let go of being the leader she never wanted to be. Grant smiles back at her. When he looks back at Earth, he catches Daisy watching him, a question on her face. But she doesn't say anything, and Grant lets her be.

“I don't want to be a replacement,” Daisy tells him after they return to the Lighthouse, the Trawler's engines cooling down behind them with a disquieting sound, Flint and Tess already gone to meet with the others.

He looks at her, and he thinks she looks nothing like Skye, sees Daisy where once his girlfriend stood with him. “I don't want to be a second chance,” he replies.

She nods. “I think we ran out of chances a long time ago anyway.”

She reaches out then, lets her fingertips meet his in a gentle touch. He wonders if it's supposed to be an apology. And doubts it. Grant looks at her hands then, sees the calluses on their skin, sees the blisters and the burns that working on the Lighthouse and the Trawler have left on them. “Then what is this?” he asks her.

A snort, soft and a bit bitter. A bit hopeful, too. “Making things work.”

She goes on her tiptoes then, and she presses her lips against his, just for a moment, just for a lifetime. And maybe time is standing still, maybe it became warped when they were thrown through it, but Grant gets lost in the moment, lost in her touch. He's not ready for her to pull away from him.

But she does so anyway, and her smile is all business, is determination. "Let’s go. I think Tess is waiting for us."

He nods, and once more he follows her.

*~*

“I kinda miss sunsets,” he tells her in the darkness of the room, both of them alone there for once, Tess and Flint working another shift. “Never used to care for them before.”

“I'm more of a sunrise person,” Daisy replies. She moves closer to him then, her body warm against his even through their blankets. “New beginnings and all that stuff.”

And Grant thinks that while he stopped loving Skye, Daisy stopped hating Ward. She had let go of him, and Grant isn't quite sure how he missed that, how he got lost in her past as well as his own. 

It's time to catch up with the future, he thinks. Even if he has to start running to do it.

He would have died for Skye.

Maybe he could live for Daisy.


End file.
